HUNKY heartthrobs of two dif ferent generations – Robert Taylor and Rock Hudson – both had career breakthroughs in different versions of “Magnificent Obsession.”

The 1936 original, co-starring Irene Dunne and directed by John M. Stahl, as well as Douglas Sirk’s lavish 1954 Technicolor remake with Jane Wyman, are included in a new two-disc DVD set from the Criterion Collection.

Both movies – hugely popular in their time – are grandly melodramatic, loosely adapted from a novel by the then-popular Lloyd C. Douglas, a former minister who specialized in religious and medical themes.

Taylor and Hudson portray chastened playboys who take up medicine after their selfish behavior results in the deaths of talented surgeons. They pursue the dead men’s widows (Dunne, Wyman) – whom they endeavor to cure of blindness.

Stahl, a New Yorker, and Sirk, a refugee from Nazi Germany, are considered two of the pre-eminent directors of what Hollywood used to call “women’s pictures.”

Although their Hollywood careers overlapped in the 1940s (Stahl died in 1950, Sirk in 1987), the two directors are strongly linked by three romantic melodramas that were made by Stahl and then remade – with much more emphasis on fashion – by Sirk.

Better known than the two editions of “Magnificent Obsession” are two versions of “Imitation of Life” that were directed by Stahl in 1934 with Claudette Colbert and remade by Sirk in 1959 starring Lana Turner. Both are already available as a double-disc DVD from Universal.

Awaiting rediscovery is the other Stahl/Sirk doubleheader – the musical melodrama “When Tomorrow Comes” (1939), also with Dunne, remade by Sirk and his frequent collaborator, producer Ross Hunter, as “Interlude” (1957) starring June Allyson.

The Criterion DVD of “Magnificent Obsession” focuses on Sirk, with appreciations by directors Allison Anders and Kathryn Bigelow – but not, oddly, Todd Haynes, who deconstructed Sirk’s “All That Heaven Allows” with Wyman (also available from Criterion) for his own film “Far From Heaven.”

There is also a feature-length 1991 documentary in which Sirk reflects on his careers in Hollywood and his native Germany, where he returned to direct his final three films in the 1960s.